... was a common tendency, which we cannot trace to any close interchange of ideas and must therefore attribute to the operation of the same natural cause and necessity, towards the evolution of a social hierarchy based on a division according to four different social activities,—spiritual function, political domination and the double economic function of mercantile production and interchange and dependent... it were, the whole people indiscriminately, Brahmin and Shudra, became for a time potentially a people of soldiers, politicians and administrators. In other words, the institution of a fixed social hierarchy, while it seems to have been a necessary stage for the first tendencies of national formation, needed to modify itself and prepare its own dissolution if the later stages were to be rendered possible... to make room for a powerful and visible centre of political and administrative unity. This stage is necessarily attended by a strong tendency to the abrogation of even such liberties as a fixed social hierarchy provides and the concentration of power in the hands, usually, of a dominant if not always an absolute monarchical government. By modern democratic ideas kingship is only Page 378 ...
... mean that culture should not be brought to every doorstep. Shutting out someone from culture was an invention of later times. But even in later times when the four orders had grown into a fixed social hierarchy, when we had lost almost all our freedom, there remained the individual's freedom to pursue his or her spiritual knowledge. In India we find, said Sri Aurobindo, "up to the end the yogins, saints ...
... from traditional authority and lore, derived from all the strata of the community down to the lowest Shudras and even the despised and oppressed outcastes. The four orders grew into a fixed social hierarchy, but, leaving aside the status of the outcastes, each had attached to it a spiritual life and utility, a certain social dignity, an education, a principle of social and ethical honour and a place... but none was denied the right or opportunity of amassing wealth and making some figure in society, administration and politics by means of influence or status in his own order. For, finally, the social hierarchy was not at the same time a political hierarchy: Page 410 all the four orders had their part in the common political rights of the citizen and in the assemblies and administrative bodies ...
... was a common tendency, which we cannot trace to any close interchange of ideas and must therefore attribute to the operation of the same natural cause and necessity, towards the evolution of a social hierarchy based on a division according to four different social activities [ i.e. the varnas ]. … The spirit, form and equipoise worked out were very different in different parts of the world according ...
... organizing its societies at present, and that many are even prepared to give their life for the freedom it provides, one may sense in which direction Hitler was working out his reactionary goals: social hierarchy (the “Führer principle”) instead of equality before the law, and ultimately an order in which the master race of the Germanic-Nordic-Aryans rules over the other races, the subjugated subhuman ...
... life marked by fixity of status through which individual and common interests might be brought under the yoke of a sufficient religious, political and economic unity. The institution of a fixed social hierarchy seems to have been a necessary stage for the first tendencies of national formation. But in the second stage, there comes about the modification of the social structure so as to make room for ...
... reference for ascertaining the function and the value of the individual. It is in fulfilling the dharma, obeying the nomoi, in carrying out faithfully the duties attached to one's position in the social hierarchy that lay the highest good, summum bonum. Certainly there were voices of protest, independent spirits who refused to drown themselves, lose themselves in the general current. That is to say ...
... ready acceptance among those who are concerned particularly with the physical life, the "natural men". These men have been derided and despised by orthodox Vedantists and by men at the top of the social hierarchy. That is why the Tantrics have had to form esoteric groups and often remain for ages hidden like an underground stream; they have been submerged in the lower reaches of society. They have taken ...
... universal suffrage when Prussia unified Germany.” Here were created or consolidated the elements of the German mind: Prussian nationalism and racism, autarchy, militarism, respect for the social hierarchical pyramid, unconditional obedience and a sense of duty; they would buttress the national ambitions and make belligerency part of the air the Germans breathed. This spirit was so pervading that... added to these are also all kinds of other considerations, intellectual, linguistic, social, etc. Haeckel’s classification is a taxonomic fantasy.” 428 Haeckel found that humanity consisted of thirty-six races, divided into twelve species. He drew a human ancestral tree in which all of them fitted hierarchically. It will surprise no one that the Indo-Germans came out on top of the tree. What is... to explore this field. Of direct importance to our story were Haeckel’s theories about race, more specifically the way in which he thought the human being was related to the primates and the hierarchical order he surmised within the species homo sapiens. In Haeckel and in all his contemporaries, though they spoke with great authority and were believed with respectful amazement because of their ...
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